


As Eternity Unfolds Before You

by 4eeldrive



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 16:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6573772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4eeldrive/pseuds/4eeldrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in the new universe Porrim is still exhausted. Damara plays video games, and later they both go on a walk. Nothing really happens, but things are nice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Eternity Unfolds Before You

The game had been uncharacteristically kind in their winning. Everyone who had been killed before the end had come back, some multitude of them as a single, living being. The new world they’d won was a tame mashup of Earth and Alternia/Beforus, but somehow still a wholly new thing - a gentle sun, two remaining moons, a startling lack of monstrous wildlife replaced with smaller Earth versions. Mother Grubs, to Kanaya’s immense relief.

Among the sprawling landscape of Can Town they’d each found a house open and waiting for them. Thankfully or unthankfully empty, devoid of the things they’d left behind in childhood. Less than they deserved but more than they’d all hoped. They'd been gods once, and now here they were, awkward children grown into awkward adults with too much death still on the mind.

Porrim didn’t trust any of it, and felt partially vindicated in this paranoia by the fact that her and Kanaya were still vampires, still technically dead. As if the game couldn’t have put in place some workaround. Why would the game suddenly be kind in victory when it had been so cruel in all other avenues? She kept waiting to wake up, back as a multitude of selves floating aimlessly through dream bubbles. To round a corner and be face to face with a game construct, or the Condesce, or Lord English himself. She opened doors cautiously, waiting for something to leap out at her from the other side.

So it was that she nearly attacked Damara the day she opened her door to find her sprawled out on the floor of her house, wrapped up in a rug.

“Hi.” Damara peered at her from under the hood the rug made laying over her horns, thoroughly sheepish.

“Oh, my god, Damara.” Porrim clutched her heart as she tried to calm her breathing down, her hair still fluffed in panic. “I was ready to just obliterate you.”

Damara nodded, settling further into the rug. What was one more destruction, really? The two made mildly uncomfortable, totally silent eye contact until Porrim recovered from the small shock.

“What are you doing here? How did you even get in?”

“Broke a window.”

“What, I, what? Why?”

“I don’t like my house.”

Porrim crouched down on the floor near Damara, tugging a bit at the rug. Damara refused to give it over.

“Why don’t you like your house?”

“It’s cold.”

“Did you try and heat it? Do you have firewood? I can get Kanaya to chop you some more if you need it.”

Damara merely rolled her eyes. “No, it’s COLD.”

“Ok.” Porrim didn’t understand what she was getting at, beyond the fact the cold clearly didn’t mean the temperature in this case. “Well, you can take the couch, and I guess we can just figure something out from there."

Damara’s eyes went wide, like she honestly hadn’t been expecting an invitation to stay, or at least not one so easily offered. Trancelike, she headed to the couch, rug still draped over her shoulders like some ancient queen draped in velveteen and furs, and slowly sunk down onto the cushions. She leaned forward, hands resting on the edge gargoyle-like, as if she was ready to launch herself up at any second.

Porrim nodded at her, and went into the kitchen. “Do you want anything? I have apples and...bread.”

“Water?” Came the hesitant reply from the other room. Porrim filled a glass from the tap, and brought it back out to Damara, who still sat ready to spring from the couch. Damara took the water and drank desperately, not stopping till the glass was empty. She made wild eye contact with Porrim the entire time.

“Chill, my god.” Porrim immediately regretted what she said. Of course Damara would be skittish, and of course she had the right to. She got her another glass of water, and Damara settled slightly more into the couch.

Porrim’s house seemed to be warm enough, because Damara didn’t leave. And that was all right.

The new world was only half formed. A wilderness beyond Can Town, and new people appearing overnight, trolls and humans and carapacians just waking up into life on the edge of town. Like their winning had been unexpected, and the world was trying to catch up to their victory. So Can Town needed work, and there was no long rest after the end. Everyone slotted themselves into odd jobs. Kanaya did arboriculture and looked after the Mother Grubs with Porrim's help. Jade worked in greenhouses to try and up food production for a population that ballooned overnight. Roxy helped appearify houses. Damara probably did something, but Porrim still hadn't figured out what it was, months after she’d moved in.

When Porrim wasn’t helping Kanaya, she worked in a can factory, because Can Town always needed more cans. She hated it, but it needed to be done. And the factory had shifts at night, Porrim still unwilling to make the jump to diurnal scheduling.

She thought only of going to bed on her walk home every morning. Normally that was all she thought about, but tonight her walk home was also overcast with rain; she could not wait to be dry and asleep.

Trudging up to her door through the mud and rain, she fumbled several times trying to get the key in the lock. The third time she dropped them and her horns hit the door as she bent down to pick them up, carving two grooves into the wood. She sighed, and turned the key, only to find the door had been unlocked anyway. 

“Damara?” Had she forgotten to lock the door when she left? Had something gotten into the house? Was Damara okay? Without even thinking, she had phosphoresced, ready to tear into whatever was in the house.

It was just Damara, sprawled out in the couch in her underwear, a single slipper dangling haphazardly from her left foot that was propped up on the couch’s armrest, and a game controller resting on her stomach. “You always struggle with the keys.”

Porrim exhaled hard, letting her glow fall at the same time. She shambled further into her house, suddenly even more tired than she was before. At least Damara was safe, and she supposed it had been considerate of her to unlock the door when she got up.

“Did you stay up late just to play video games?” Normally Damara was already asleep when Porrim came home, and would wake up and immediately start whining if Porrim made too much noise while making her 5:00 am dinner.

“Didn’t go to bed.” Damra was looking at the screen as she addressed her, mashing buttons.

“Oh my god.” Porrim groaned. She would kill a man for the chance of a full night’s sleep. She rubbed at her eyes, and then turned to look at the screen Damara was glued to. Her character was some sort of magician-knight, strafing around the screen as she fought some disgusting oozing monster. It swiped at her character and the hit connected, knocking her avatar back a significant distance, taking a sizable chunk out of her life bar. Damara swore under her breath.

“Damara this looks terrible.”

“No, its fun.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

 _'You Died'_  appeared on screen after another hit connected. Damara sighed.

“It looks terrible.” Porrim repeated, heading to the kitchen. She wanted eggs, but was too tired to manage to get the pan on the burner quietly, resulting in a loud clanging. At least Damara was awake, but the noise still displeased her.

“Ugh!” Damra yelled from the other room. “You're the Dark Souls of girlfriends.” Porrim immediately forgot the eggs.

“What did I say about memes in this household?” She shouted back at Damara. Porrim was glad Damara and Dave seemed to be friends, but he was honestly a bad influence.

“Screamed ‘don’t.’”

“That’s right, I did.”

Sword clashing sounds and monster growling emanated from the next room.

“I picked you strawberries yesterday. They’re in the fridge.”

Delighted, Porrim went to the kitchen to retrieve her gift. “You mean you pulled yourself away from your game long enough to forage me food?”

Damara padded into the kitchen, and slammed some bread down into the toaster with more force than necessary. “I kept dying. But I could win at standing still and picking things off a bush.”

“Do strawberries grow on a bush?” Porrim loved strawberries, and was delighted Jade had carried seeds along to the New Universe in her captchalogue, but their Earth origins were still largely a mystery to her.

“Yes.” Damara responded. The toast popped up out of the toaster, and Damara didn’t let it cool before grabbing it, making several attempts to pull it out of the toaster with the tips of her fingers. Porrim wasn’t sure if that constituted winning at toast as well, but didn’t bring it up. After Damara had set the toast down on a plate, she gently pushed Porrim away from the stove and snatched the eggs out of her hand.

Porrim sat down at the table, pleased, but tired, as Damara made scrambled eggs. When they were done, Damara plopped the eggs onto Porrim’s plate, some splattering onto the table. Damara ignored it and went to rummage around in the fridge. She pulled out a half-full jar of blackcurrant jelly that Porrim didn’t remember making or eating at any point, and offered it to Porrim.

Porrim slowly made her way through the eggs and toast, saving the strawberries for last. Damara sat quietly across from her.

“D’you want some of the eggs?” Porrim asked when she realized Damara wasn’t eating. Damara shook her head no.

“How was work?”

“Mmf,” Porrim grunted around a mouthful of toast. Damara nodded.

“What was that nice game you were playing a while ago? With the little animals?”

Damara cocked her head.

“You had a bat-thing and named it after me?”

“Pokemon?”

“Yeah, that looked nice, what happened to that?” Porrim spooned jam onto her toast, and slowly ate her way through the two pieces.

“Got boring.”

“Shame. What’s this new game about?”

Damara sat thinking for a while. “You die a lot and fight monsters and there's some mysteries and it's kind of sad and everyone’s dead.”

A simple enough explanation, but Porrim found she suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore. She set her fork down, and nudged her plate away.

“Damara, we lived through that. Why would you want to play something like that?”

Damara shrugged. “Because I’m winning. Mostly.” She pointed at Porrim’s abandoned plate.

“No, I’m good. Thanks for cooking though.”

Damara frowned. Sometimes eating made her sick, but Porrim never had trouble eating. She proffered a wrist across the table, thinking maybe she’d made Porrim the wrong type of food. Porrim glanced down at Damara’s thin wrist and now-unprotected pulse point. A sweet gesture, but she did hate biting her, and her insides were a twisting pit of discomfort and remorse at the moment. She’d probably vomit everywhere the instant the tang of iron hit her tongue.

“Thank you, Damara, but I’m really not hungry.” Damara glanced down at her wrist and then back at Porrim, before slowly retracting her arm. For a second she looked at her own wrist and bared her teeth, bringing her arm ever-so-slightly up towards her own mouth, like if Porrim wasn’t going to drink from her, then **_someone_** had to. The impulse passed, and she crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair to stare at Porrim.

Porrim looked away, resting her eyes on the strawberries, focusing in on one specific seed on one specific berry, as if that would help anything.

“I’m going to bed,” she mumbled, more to the strawberry than to Damara. As she got up to head towards the bedroom Damara shot out of her chair, knocking it back several inches, and blocking Porrim’s path. Porrim sighed.

“It’s fine, Damara.” An obvious lie.

“No. Let’s go on a walk. You only go outside to go to work.” An incomplete lie. Porrim was sure she’d gone and sat on the porch sometime last week.

“Damara, I’m so tired. I’ll go on a walk with you after a nap.”

Damara extended her arms to either side as Porrim tried to sidestep around her.

“No, you’ll sleep for like sixteen hours and I won’t see you at all. And you’ll wake up sad. We’re going on a walk now.” Damara backed up, arms still extended, until she reached the bedroom and quickly shut the door. Porrim heard the door lock. She groaned, and looked back to the untouched strawberries. She picked one up and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly. Damara reemerged, wearing shorts and a tank top that was far too big for her that Porrim was fairly certain belonged to Kanaya.

“I liked it so I stole it last time we went to her house.” Damara answered the unasked question when she saw Porrim looking quizzically at her. “She probably doesn’t mind.” Damara grabbed Porrim’s arm and pulled her towards the door. At the very least Porrim’s left arm was going on the walk. The rest of her might as well go along with it. It had at least stopped raining.

The unpaved path sat wide and inviting between the still damp grass, a small canyon between the trees and hills on either side of it. Puddles remained after the rain, and Damara carefully tiptoed around them. Porrim had put her work boots back on, and didn’t bother to avoid the puddles and the mud. She caught Damara eyeing a particularly large puddle in front of them.

“Don’t.” Porrim whispered. Damara, turned her head slightly to look at her, not enough to follow acknowledge Porrim’s plea, trying to pretend like she hadn’t been planning on jumping straight into the middle of the puddle.

"You can't avoid every tiny speck of rain and then want to jump into the biggest puddle we see." They passed it without incident and Damara grinned at Porrim.

Small frogs, woken up by the rainstorm creaked and croaked in the underbrush. Some would hop along the path, crossing in front of Damara and Porrim. The two always stopped, semi-reverently, to let the frog make its way. The little beasts looked so much like the genesis frog, swirling designs across their back. Damara traced the swirling tattoos on Porrim’s arms as they watched a frog creep over the path to its destination.

Worms pushed their way up from underground as well, looking suspiciously like tiny versions of the Denizens. Porrim didn’t remember worms on Beforus having heads that looked like tiny suns.

The trees began to thin as they neared Can Town, breaking into a wide flat expanse. The field was dotted with strawberry plants, and tufts of tiny purple flowers blooming close to the ground. Damara reached out and took Porrim’s hand.

They crossed half of the expanse, Porrim stifling yawns. Finally she had to stop to yawn so widely that she was a little worried she’d lock her jaw open. Damara waited for her to recover, and then gently tugged her off the main path and into the field.

“Where are we going?”

“I need to show you this great thing I found last afternoon.”

“Ok, how long were you actually playing video games while I was gone that you had time to do all this stuff.”

“Only an hour. Maybe two.” Damara’s sheep ears cocked forwards in a way that Porrim always thought was cute. “No more than five.”

Porrim couldn’t tell where they were going; Damara was still trying to avoid the dampest spots of earth, leading them all criss cross through the field. They’d actually doubled back a few times. Maybe this was some weird extended metaphor Damara was trying to impart on her. That was more something Porrim would expect that from Aradia (who Porrim liked, but not enough to skip a nap for), but seemed a little out-of character for Damara. Her thought process tended to go along more straight lines, even if her pathfinding couldn’t. Seriously, that was the same patch of strawberries they’d already passed, Porrim was sure - just because that one patch of heather had been a little damper than the rest they'd had to circle back around.

But they were still holding hands, and everything still smelled of rain, and the field was wide and open, no closed doors to be scared of. Porrim didn’t regret it.

“There it is.” Damara pointed with the hand that was clutching Porrim’s, dragging her arm up as well. A small grove of lilac bushes sat in the field, rising up monumentally from the low-growing plants. They grew almost circular around each other, a small opening at their center.

“I came and sat in here yesterday while you were at work. Its nice.” Damara crouched a bit to get inside, but didn’t sit down, the grass still damp. “You should smell the flowers, they’re also nice.”

Porrim followed Damara’s suggestion, gently pulling a branch down nearer to herself. The smell filled her nostrils and she sighed. Damara grinned at her. Porrim loved that gap between her front teeth, and was rapidly overwhelmed with how glad she was that Damara smiled more often. That it rained real rain and not a hollow memory. That flowers had smell. That the two of them were standing here together. Suddenly everything was worth it; the small gnawing doubt at the back of Porrim’s mind temporarily banished.

She was still tired though, no matter how okay things were. “Damara, this is lovely, thank you for bringing me out here.” She leaned forward to give her a quick peck on the cheek. “I would like to go home and sleep now, though.”

Damara released the branch of lilac she’d been holding, sending it whipping back into its regular position.

“Yeah, nap time.” Plucking a sprig of lilac, she tucked it behind an ear, nestled against the curl of her horn, before taking Porrim’s hand again and leading them back to the path. They crossed the field, and walked back along the road, Damara thankfully holding out a second time from jumping straight into a huge puddle.

Back home, Porrim sighed as she lowered herself into bed, back and arm plates creaking a bit. Damara followed her into the bed, resting on her elbows and hanging over Porrim.

The lilac was still behind her ear, her long dark hair that she’d barely bothered to tie back into a bun coming loose around it. It was beautiful, Damara was beautiful, and Porrim reached out to gently touch the tiny flowers, before letting her hand drop slightly to trace along Damara’s jaw. Damara sighed, and leaned down to kiss Porrim before lowering herself onto the bed beside her. Damara fell asleep almost immediately, her breathing slowing down to long snores, and Porrim suspected there had been more than five hours of video gaming the night before. Porrim snaked a hand into the curl of Damara’s horn, and closed her eyes.

Everything had been worth it, in the end. Porrim drifted into sleep, unafraid of what she would wake up to.

**Author's Note:**

> 4gigs worth of thoughts:
> 
> Since I believe the game would still be cruel even in victory, Dark Souls would obviously continue to exist in the new Universe.
> 
> Damara would probably be better than me at Dark Souls.
> 
> Troll hair probably does that floofy Studio Ghibli thing when they're experiencing strong emotion.
> 
> Kanaya did see Damara steal her clothes but was totally fine with it.
> 
> The kids deserve a new world, but I think it’d be sad if nothing from the old ones made it over, so they totally get lilacs and strawberries.
> 
> Aradia and Dave are definitely meme lords, and friends with Damara, who is only at like, meme vassal status. I guess Porrim in this metaphor would then be like a cloistered nun, attempting to seclude herself from the evils of the world (memes). She’s unsuccessful because Damara is cute.
> 
> “Tuesday again? No problem.....” Barkbeast probably existed in troll culture, and much like Jade had the foresight to captchalogue strawberries, bringing them to the New Universe, Damara saved “Tuesday again? No problem.....” Barkbeast. She texts it to Porrim every Thursday when she’s at work, and Porrim still hasn’t figured out the pattern. She checks her phone on break at work and sees a nice notification of a text from her wife, only to have to rest her head in her hands and groan.


End file.
